(1885, St. Petersburg – 1973, Tbilisi)
Founder of Georgian art history. From 1906 to 1916 he studied psychology and art history at the Universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Petrograd. In 1917–1922 he worked at the Caucasian Historical-Archaeological Institute; in 1929–1934 he was an employee of the Georgian State Museum; in 1934–1941 he headed the architecture department of the Metekhi Museum of Art; in 1941–1973 he served as the director of the Institute of the History of Georgian Art. In 1918–1948 he was a professor at Tbilisi State University, and in 1922–1940 a professor at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (serving as rector in 1922–1928). He held a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Halle, was a professor, an academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Architecture, an honorary doctor of the University of Leipzig, and a Merited Worker of Science of Georgia.

One of Giorgi Chubinashvili’s principal areas of research was the history of medieval Georgian architecture. He established the fundamental regularities of the development of Georgian architecture—its stages and characteristics. He studied monographically the most important examples of Georgian ecclesiastical architecture (the Bolnisi Sioni, the Jvari Church of Mtskheta and the churches following its tradition, Zromi, Samtsevrisi, Kumurdo, the “Three Cathedrals,” etc.). He separately examined the ecclesiastical and civil architecture of Kakheti and wrote essays on the architecture of the 1930s–1950s. Chubinashvili also devoted substantial work to Georgian metal sculpture, establishing the principal stages and distinctive features of medieval Georgian plastic arts.

Issues of medieval painting are discussed in his art-historical and cultural-historical monograph on the rock-cut monasteries of Gareja. Chubinashvili wrote about examples of minor arts, both Georgian (the golden artifacts of Armaziskhevi, the ivory triptych from Racha) and imported (the Syrian bowl from Ushguli). He published essays on contemporary artists and scholars of his own time. He also studied the architecture and reliefs of neighboring countries (primarily Armenia, but also Ingushetia and Azerbaijan). In addition, he produced specialized works (such as on Albrecht Dürer’s “Christ at Age Twelve”) and popular-scientific works on European artists (Lukas Cranach, Ernst Barlach, Frans Masereel, Käthe Kollwitz).

Bibliography

Заметки о Манглисском храме, საქართველოს მუზეუმის მოამბე,  NI, 1920-1922: